


More Than a Matter of Time

by Goldy



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldy/pseuds/Goldy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> She’s been gone for 105 years and doesn’t look a day over 25.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than a Matter of Time

**Title** : More Than A Matter of Time  
 **Pairing** : future!Doctor/Rose, post-JE  
 **Summary** : _She’s been gone for 105 years and doesn’t look a day over 25._  
 **Word Count** : 2,300  
 **Rating** : PG  
 **A/N** : I swore to myself I’d never write an immortal!Rose fic, but it’s basically like a rite of passage in this fandom, isn’t it? So I was really only giving in to the inevitable. I was thinking Twelve or Thirteen for the Doctor, but probably not Eleven.

He’s regenerated.

She doesn’t know if it makes it better or worse; easier or more difficult to remember he isn’t her Doctor, isn’t _quite_ the man she loves.

His gasp is soft when he sees her and his whole body stills, frozen for a single moment of time before he explodes into action. He grabs her shoulders, peers into her eyes, gaze sweeping over her face, neck, throat.

He murmurs her name. _Rose_. And there’s something like devastation in his voice, like she’s a ghost that won’t stop haunting him.

His fingers tighten against her shoulders and Rose clenches her jaw, but doesn’t say anything. She holds back, tries not to stare into his eyes, tries not to think of him as _theDoctorTARDIStravelling_ , and knows that the cracks around her heart are starting to show.

She’s been gone for 105 years and doesn’t look a day over 25.

Finally, the Doctor pulls back and reaches for his sonic screwdriver. When he faces her again, his tone is grim. “I don’t know who you are, but you picked the wrong person to impersonate.”

“Run your tests, then,” she says. “Find out who I am.”

 _Who I’ve become_ , she thinks silently.

For a second, for a horrible, aching, joyful second, she thinks that the Doctor might take her hand to lead her into the TARDIS.

He doesn’t. He jerks his head and waits for her to go on ahead of him.

****

He probes her mind, tests her blood, peers into her face and mumbles “interesting” and “I see.” But he doesn’t babble as he works, not like the other—not like he used to. Rose thinks of glasses and worried frowns, of crinkled brown eyes and warm hugs. He was so gentle with her when he first found out.

The Doctor gives up after two hours. She can see when the realization hits him—he slumps against the infirmary bed, head bowed. Then he takes a few steps back, standing in the middle of the room and watching her with wide eyes like he wants nothing more than to put distance between them and keep it that way.

It stings and that surprises her.

“How long?” he chokes out. He scrubs a hand over his face and shakes his head, asking the other question, the more important one, “Rose, how old are you?”

She smiles, a tight cold smile. “Old enough.”

His face screws up like he might cry, and Rose feels a perverse thrill of satisfaction.

“And the other me, he’s…?”

“Dead,” Rose says dully, and a fist squeezes inside of her. Her eyes fill, and she feels tired. So old and so very tired.

****

“I shouldn’t have come. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Don’t say that.”

His hand is on her arm. It’s cold and foreign and he doesn’t sound or smell like he’s supposed to.

She whirls around and he takes a startled step backwards. “You can’t fix this. Not this time.”

“Rose, we don’t know that,” he says, speaking slowly and carefully like she’s a wounded animal. “We just need to run some tests and—”

“That’s not how it works,” she says angrily, long past a time when she would have done her best to protect him from painful truths. “It was _me_. I did this. I looked into TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into me.”

She can sense his uncertainty, but then he shakes his head, speaking firmly, “I took that power out of you.”

“It didn’t matter. I wanted to be with you forever.” She curls her hand into a fist, nails digging into her palm. “The one thing you wouldn’t give me.”

He sucks in an audible breath and crosses his arms, his stance becoming more defiant yet somehow more vulnerable. Rose recognizes this pose; knows that it’s his way of trying to fend off more pain.

She swallows heavily. “I don’t blame you.”

Doesn’t she, though? Isn’t that way she came back, why she tracked him down? To rub his nose in it? To show him that she suffered for the person she loved and lived on?

He doesn’t respond right away. “I’m still here,” he says suddenly. There’s a fierce hope in his eyes when he gazes at her. “It’s me, Rose. You know that, right? It’s still… me.”

She feels sick, trapped—and fancy _that_ on a ship that’s bigger on the inside. But the Doctor doesn’t look like he should, and he isn’t the one who loved her every day, through thick and thin, stuck in a life with walls and carpets and mortgages.

“I’ve got to go,” she says and hurries to the door.

“Rose.” Her name sounds like a plea. “Rose, please.”

She ignores him.

****

He finds her in the nearest chip shop. She sits in the corner, picking at her chips and tearing at a napkin with the other hand. She doesn’t acknowledge him when he sits down across from her. He’s quiet and Rose can feel him staring at her.

Finally, she breaks the silence, “Did you know?”

She sees him tense, his eyes widening. “What?”

“When you left me there, with him,” she continues, dragging her gaze up from the chips to meet his. “Did you know?”

He stares at her in mute silence like she’s a stranger. Then he shakes his head. “No.”

“Oh.”

He sounds desperate. “How could you think that I...?”

She shrugs. “I’ve thought a lot of things over the years, Doctor.”

“I would _never_. Not… not to you.”

“You never told me about Jack,” Rose points out. She munches on a chip. “Maybe you both thought some things are better left unsaid.”

His wide-eyed stare gives her chills and she looks away. “I took that power out of you,” he presses. “Rose, I never wanted this for you.”

Something in his voice breaks her heart. She remembers a sunny London day when he turned to her and told her he was the only one left. So she took his hand and they went for chips.

Maybe she’s not so different from the girl she used to be.

“I know,” she says. “It was stupid of me to think otherwise.”

He manages a jerky nod and relaxes slightly. “Okay, then. Good.”

Silence falls again. Rose takes another chip and lets it sit in her mouth until the salt stings her tongue before swallowing.

The Doctor clears his throat. “The two of you, you were happy?”

“Yeah,” she says, relieved that this, at least, she can give him. “I think so. No TARDIS in that world, though, yeah?”

“No. I suppose not.”

“He was, though. Happy. It worked okay for the first 30 years or so,” Rose says. “People didn’t even think it was that weird—older man, younger women. They just thought he was rich.” She pauses. “He spent the last 20 feeling guilty. I tried to tell him that it was worth it, that we had a good life, it was just…” Her voice caught. “He didn’t want me to go through this.”

“I’m sorry.” He draws in a breath and Rose hopes that he might leave her alone, but she can sense his curiosity. She isn’t surprised when he asks another question. “Did you have children?”

Rose shakes her head and eats another chip. “Our lives were too dangerous. And then, once we knew what had happened to me…” she trails off, voice catching. “Besides, I don’t think we really wanted to share each other.”

The Doctor nods. “You loved each other, then. Very much.”

“Yeah,” Rose says. “Of course we did. It was you and me, wasn’t it?”

Something in his gaze softens and he murmurs a soft, “Right.”

Rose feels her lips turn up at the corners. Oh, she’s _missed_ this. He can still make her feel like the most important thing in his world with just a look.

He smiles back tentatively—he has dimples in this incarnation, and she finds it oddly cute on him—but then says, “You’re angry with him.”

Rose sets down a chip and blinks at him. “What?”

“He left you.”

Her skin still itches from his stare and she rubs idly at one elbow, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. He might not look like her Doctor, but it’s apparent that he very much _is_ the Doctor and she…

She’s not quite ready to sort through how she might feel about that.

“It’s not his fault he got old and died.”

“Still left, though, didn’t he? Both of us did.”

Rose presses her fists to her eyes and bows her head. “Stop.”

“I know what that’s like, Rose. Believe me. And I never wanted…” he sounds lost. “I just wanted you to be happy.”

She can’t hold back her snort of laughter, but it comes out more like a sob. She drops her hand back to her side. “And I wanted to be with you.” She pauses. “God, that sounds so pathetic.”

“Don’t say that,” he admonishes gently. And then, “Come with me, Rose.”

She hates the way he’s looking at her—like she’s a broken toy that needs to be fixed. Like she’s a faulty connection in the console and just needs a little prodding from the sonic screwdriver to be set right.

“I can look after myself.”

“Well, what about me?” he says, trying to sound angry, but mostly coming across as hurt and vulnerable. It reminds her of what he first looked like in those bewildering days after they were left back on Bad Wolf Bay. Every time she turned around, he’d been there, eyes begging her to accept him.

A lump gathers in her throat. “How d’you mean?”

He looks frustrated. “Rose, do you honestly expect me to keep saying goodbye over and over? I just got you back, I… I need you.”

“No,” she says, worried now. She knows how this ends and she’s tired of being the one who gets left behind. “I can’t help anyone. Not anymore.”

“You can help me.”

“Don’t _say_ that,” she says, her open-hand smacking down on the table. The chips jump in their basket and the saltshaker wobbles before falling over. “You can’t just throw two messed up lonely people together and hope… and hope…”

She can’t get the rest out because he slides his hand across the table, holding it out to her, fingers wriggling at hers. There’s a hopeful wiggle to his eyebrows and a _come-hither_ look in his eyes—a look that she’s never been able to resist, no matter the incarnation.

She feels a lump gather in her throat. It’s their language, isn’t it? It always felt like with his hand in hers they could overcome everything.

She takes a breath and reaches out to take his hand. His fingers slide into hers, thicker and cooler than she’s used to, different and strange yet familiar all at once.

Slowly, she raises her gaze to meet his eyes. “Doctor?”

He smiles at her, a warm and hopeful smile that has her heart beating faster. “Hello.”

She slumps back against the booth, trying not to shake. She’s lived one forever with him, and she isn’t sure that she’s quite ready for another.

He drops her hand and in a flash, he’s in the seat next to her, pulling her into his arms. “Hey, we’ll be alright,” he whispers into her hair. “I promise.”

She falls into his hug, clinging to the back of his neck. His chest is wider, and she feels like he’s surrounding her. “I miss you so much.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

His hands smooth down her back and she shivers, pressing her face against shoulder. Her breath shudders in and out. “I wish you knew what we…. But you’re not…”

_He’s not you._

She shivers at the memory, and he holds her tighter, cheek pressed against the top of her head.

“I am.”

“You’re different,” she protests, but she’s still clinging to him.

“I’m not—I mean, I am, but I’m not. I’m... Rose, it’s me. You know that, don’t you?”

She nods against his neck, tears hot and burning. “I never did get rid of that dimension cannon.”

He tucks a lock behind her ear, and then pulls her in close again. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

She sighs and feels herself relaxing. It’s right, like this. He’s got decades of missing memories with her, but she has to start thinking beyond that now—towards the years and centuries that she has left.

“Rose,” he murmurs, against her ear. “ _Rose_.” She can hear the joy bubbling up in his voice. She wonders what it about her that seems to make him so _happy_. How can she? Even after all this time?

His voice drops to a whisper and he repeats, “Come with me?”

And she can practically _see_ him imagining an end to his loneliness—a light hovering at the end of the tunnel of all the years and decades that he’s spent on his own.

She breathes in deeply and releases him. She remembers the promise in his eyes when he came back for her a second time, all those years ago: _Did I mention, it also travels in time?_

How can she refuse that offer?

“We’re taking the chips to go,” she says, and can’t pretend that his responding grin doesn’t make her stomach do flip-flops. 


End file.
